Pathfinder Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition - now with turn-based combat

[Trashos]

Much of the things attributed to combat in BG are due to SCS. Combat is a walk in the park without it installed.

Just to make something clear, I have never used any mods for BG2, and also I have no idea what Beamdog has done to it. My 10+ BG2 full playthroughs are with the original Baldur's Gate 2 Shadows of Amn with no expansions.
(I have played TOB, but do not use it for my replays. Cheese aside, the original BG2 SoA reached near perfection for my tastes within the context of what it was trying to do, and I am not willing to dilute it with any other software.)

Yeah, well, Linzi is my mage duelist in P:K. She counterspells with her sonic spells that trigger a Fortitude save + a concentration check on the damage and she Dispels buffs that sneak through. Her Dirge of Doom debuffs both saves and and attack bonuses while also turning on Shatter Defenses.

All that interplay is there, but as with much else it doesn't hold your hand in finding it - you've got to figure it out for yourself.

I have no experience with that strategy yet, and cannot judge it by a mere description. But iit sounds like a much simpler system or, at least, a quite different system (even if the goals are similar). Anyway, I will probably have more to say on the matter once I crank the difficulty up a few times, and have to dive deeper into the system.

 

[Pink Eye]

Much of the things attributed to combat in BG are due to SCS. Combat is a walk in the park without it installed.

Just to make something clear, I have never used any mods for BG2, and also I have no idea what Beamdog has done to it. My 10+ BG2 full playthroughs are with the original Baldur's Gate 2 Shadows of Amn with no expansions.
(I have played TOB, but do not use it for my replays. Cheese aside, the original BG2 SoA reached near perfection for my tastes within the context of what it was trying to do, and I am not willing to dilute it with any other software.)

Yeah, well, Linzi is my mage duelist in P:K. She counterspells with her sonic spells that trigger a Fortitude save + a concentration check on the damage and she Dispels buffs that sneak through. Her Dirge of Doom debuffs both saves and and attack bonuses while also turning on Shatter Defenses.

All that interplay is there, but as with much else it doesn't hold your hand in finding it - you've got to figure it out for yourself.

I have no experience with that strategy yet, and cannot judge it by a mere description. But iit sounds like a much simpler system or, at least, a quite different system (even if the goals are similar). Anyway, I will probably have more to say on the matter once I crank the difficulty up a few times, and have to dive deeper into the system.

Oh what difficulty are you currently playing on, Trashos. If you don't mind me asking.

 

[Efe]

Never modded bg2? never tried dearnise romance and joined in her quest to help the needy masses?

 

[Yosharian]

I'm actually not a big fan of BG. I mean those are solid games, just nowhere near the podium of best crpgs.

But I'll readily admit that these 2 things have never been done better: spell Combat and party vs party encounters. Oh and also Kangaxx was one of the most memorable encounters for me, due to nearly... Inevitability of his certain abilities, as well as defenses which nearly couldn't be defeated at certain level - without very specific weapons and/or spells.

What kind of CRPGs does the Great Haplo play?

Deadfire?

 

[ArchAngel]

I enjoy it a lot (especially in Turn Based where you can control ever little action) to battle enemies with only 1 or 2 weaknesses and then finding things that work. It is not BG2 mage battles but it is still better than any other RPG I played.

 

[Trashos]

Oh what difficulty are you currently playing on, Trashos. If you don't mind me asking.

Kingmaker: Challenging with normal enemies. It is my 1st playthrough.

Baldur's Gate 2 SoA: Hard difficulty ironman mode is my go to play style. I have beat hardest difficulty ironman too, but I enjoy Hard more.

 

[Pink Eye]

Oh what difficulty are you currently playing on, Trashos. If you don't mind me asking.

Kingmaker: Challenging with normal enemies. It is my 1st playthrough.

Baldur's Gate 2 SoA: Hard difficulty ironman mode is my go to play style. I have beat hardest difficulty ironman too, but I enjoy Hard more.

Nice nice. In my honest opinion the game plays much differently in the higher difficulties. It's fun.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Kingmaker: Challenging with normal enemies. It is my 1st playthrough.

According to InEffect (yes, he is my one true God), you can beat the game with anything on this difficulty. Consequently, your questions should be about particular encounters you cannot solve and not about general Pathfinder theorycrafting. It has to be earned, you know.

 

[Yosharian]

Kingmaker: Challenging with normal enemies. It is my 1st playthrough.

According to InEffect (yes, he is my one true God), you can beat the game with anything on this difficulty. Consequently, your questions should be about particular encounters you cannot solve and not about general Pathfinder theorycrafting. It has to be earned, you know.

Prove it. Make 6 Human Monks with the following ability score distribution and beat the game from start to finish, on the difficulty level you just described. Standard Monks, not Scaled Fists. No Multiclassing.

Str 07
Dex 07
Con 13
Int 20 (+2)
Wis 07
Cha 18

Otherwise you're full of shit, and so is InEffect.

 

[Pink Eye]

Kingmaker: Challenging with normal enemies. It is my 1st playthrough.

According to InEffect (yes, he is my one true God), you can beat the game with anything on this difficulty. Consequently, your questions should be about particular encounters you cannot solve and not about general Pathfinder theorycrafting. It has to be earned, you know.

Heathen! Desiderius, my one true messiah, says your god sucks.

 

[Pink Eye]

Kingmaker: Challenging with normal enemies. It is my 1st playthrough.

According to InEffect (yes, he is my one true God), you can beat the game with anything on this difficulty. Consequently, your questions should be about particular encounters you cannot solve and not about general Pathfinder theorycrafting. It has to be earned, you know.

Prove it. Make 6 Human Monks with the following ability score distribution and beat the game from start to finish. Standard Monks, not Scaled Fists. No Multiclassing.

Str 07
Dex 07
Con 13
Int 20 (+2)
Wis 07
Cha 18

Otherwise you're full of shit, and so is InEffect.

Pssh. I cleared out the entire prologue area with this stupid build. By the way, in case you didn't know unfair is stupidly dependent on dice rolls at level 1.SO IM BETTER THAN EVERYONE HERE!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1847888605

 

[Desiderius]

Heathen! Desiderius, my one true messiah, says your god sucks.

InEffect is Porky + 1,000 hrs.

There is one true god and Shad is his prophet. And Haplo. And several other people I'm forgetting. A lot of great players at the Codex.

 

[Trashos]

Kingmaker: Challenging with normal enemies. It is my 1st playthrough.

According to InEffect (yes, he is my one true God), you can beat the game with anything on this difficulty. Consequently, your questions should be about particular encounters you cannot solve and not about general Pathfinder theorycrafting. It has to be earned, you know.

Oh, I agree, theorycrafting has to be earned! But I didn't do any theorycrafting, I just mentioned a system that I wanted to see, and it seems to be absent. Make no mistake, I wish someone here had told me "You are mistaken! The exact system you are looking for is indeed in the game, and plenty of fights have been designed around it!".

Don't worry, you are not going to see me give build advice very soon.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Otherwise you're full of shit, and so is InEffect.

This is a good plan for a DLC stand-alone run. And yes, I'm full of shit so I walk off my computer for some time.

 

[Pink Eye]

Kingmaker: Challenging with normal enemies. It is my 1st playthrough.

According to InEffect (yes, he is my one true God), you can beat the game with anything on this difficulty. Consequently, your questions should be about particular encounters you cannot solve and not about general Pathfinder theorycrafting. It has to be earned, you know.

Oh, I agree, theorycrafting has to be earned! But I didn't do any theorycrafting, I just mentioned a system that I wanted to see, and it seems to be absent. Make no mistake, I wish someone here had told me "You are mistaken! The exact system you are looking for is indeed in the game, and plenty of fights have been designed around it!".

Don't worry, you are not going to see me give build advice very soon.

Aw, don't be too hard on yourself. I think you got the right idea. Just don't argue with these guys, they're hardcore players.

 

[Trashos]

Hardcore players are cool, I like them. I am hardcore in other games. I don't mind watching them fight either.

 

[Pink Eye]

Hardcore players are cool, I like them. I am hardcore in other games. I don't mind watching them fight either.

That's the attitude! With enough patience and dedication, you too can beat the game on unfair, and make fun of others!
see me:

 

[Pink Eye]

I am currently beating the game on unfair iron man. Soon, I will make fun of everyone here, MWAHAHAAH!

 

[Trashos]

There is one thing I want to make clear, in case there are Pathfinder people reading here. I am not having a go at Pathfinder. I am a cRPG player, not a pnp player. BG2 is my all time favorite RTwP game, it is also a game many RTwP fans have played, so I am naturally making comparisons to BG2. From a cRPG perspective, such a thing makes perfect sense, I believe. I have no business defending DnD. I don't even know if DnD kept those systems I liked in later versions after BG2.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Much of the things attributed to combat in BG are due to SCS. Combat is a walk in the park without it installed.

I respectfully disagree. I played countless hours from release without mods until perhaps 2006. SCS, among other mods, just breathed a great deal of life back into it. The wizardry shenanigans and duels were a full component at launch.

That aside, there are splat books for Pathfinder which do have some of the functionality, like Spell Absorption or Spell Turning, but it's still very limited. Protection removal spells are even more sparse. Sadly, the true archmage feel isn't likely to come back, because of "balance". HPs basically doubled with 3E, and both damage and DCs significantly shrank with 5E, and now we are limited by concentration. Summons have been significantly diminished, too. There is some nuance which does mitigate all those loses, but it's not much consolation. Baldur's Gate 2 was the high water mark of the arcanist, which we are not likely to see again in a CRPG.

 

[Yosharian]

The biggest thing that SCS does (compared to Vanilla I mean) is prevent cheese like Protection From Magic scrolls and the like from making the hardcore encounters effortless. That those exist in BG2 is not a criticism of BG2's mage duel system, and they are optional items after all. Not everyone is a hardcore masochist who wants the most punishing encounters ever, some people are just happy to tootle along on lower difficulties and/or enjoy cheesing Kangaxx for the hell of it.

(Not me personally, I hasten to add, though at times SCS is too brutally difficult for my tastes)

 

[Daidre]

There is one thing I want to make clear, in case there are Pathfinder people reading here. I am not having a go at Pathfinder. I am a cRPG player, not a pnp player. BG2 is my all time favorite RTwP game, it is also a game many RTwP fans have played, so I am naturally making comparisons to BG2. From a cRPG perspective, such a thing makes perfect sense, I believe. I have no business defending DnD. I don't even know if DnD kept those systems I liked in later versions after BG2.

Afaik lot of the spells used for BG 2 mage duel either not present in original rules or their PnP version or nowhere as busted as in-game, like crazy powerful Mantles and Protection vs Magic Weapon for 3-4 rounds - those exist only to give mage AI fighting chance. Or something ridiculous like Spell Immunity - in PnP it protects from ONE spell of your choice with prerequisite of already making successful save against it before in character's "life". But blanket immunity to magic school? That you can cast several on top of each other??

That is the main reason why system was never used by another DnD game again. It has nothing to do with DnD.

PS I am not trying to prove that system is bad, I think it is really cool, if flawed. I wonder why Bioware decided to create it for one game - I guess it is mix of attempts to make high lvl DnD interesting and using mage as primary antagonist.

 

[Haplo]

I'm actually not a big fan of BG. I mean those are solid games, just nowhere near the podium of best crpgs.

But I'll readily admit that these 2 things have never been done better: spell Combat and party vs party encounters. Oh and also Kangaxx was one of the most memorable encounters for me, due to nearly... Inevitability of his certain abilities, as well as defenses which nearly couldn't be defeated at certain level - without very specific weapons and/or spells.

What kind of CRPGs does the Great Haplo play?

Great Haplo. Well, can't say I'm not flattered. You and Desiderius make me blush :p

What I'm playing nowadays and what I consider cRPG masterpieces are 2 very different things.

For me unchallenged remain Fallout 1 & 2 and Planescape: Torment.

Some great titles I also massively enjoyed:
NWN 1 (admittedly mostly due to online gameplay and mods)
The Witcher 1
Gothic 2

Honorable mentions: Underrail (perhaps most perfected combat system and character development mechanics+itemization), NWN2 MotB (great narrative, but the engine sucks and the purely epic game play is a bit much), Arcanum (a flawed masterpiece - great on many levels but falls flat in combat and balancing departments), Migh & Magic X Legacy (old formula greatly improved, albeit a little small), Shadowrun series, Elminage: Gothic (great party building aspect, map puzzles and playing to enemy strengths & weaknesses), Final Fantasy VII (one of my precious childhood memories - but also insane bosses and masterfully hidden secret OP abilities) and I guess Baldurs Gate also fits here.
Oh and the Souls games - if they can even be considered crpgs.

Nowadays there is Kingmaker, PoE and Deadfire, which have significantly evolved and improved the rtwp formula and for me have both surpassed Baldurs Gate. I consider IE engine clunky and 2nd edition DnD poor - apart from spellcasting, that is.

As for what I'm playing now, well I've recently had good fun with Code Vein and am now playing The Outer Worlds. But I have very little time to play nowadays, so I've only finished exploring the Groundbreaker so far.

 

[Yosharian]

Code Vein

 

[Haplo]

What? Was good fun. Pleasant to... Look at as well.
I like bigass swords. And broken ability combinations. And heavy character customization. Flashy, over the top abilities. Code Vein delivered on these fronts.